Like other people, individuals with impaired vision or hearing find it advantageous to use messaging systems. But if a voice message, or a multimedia message with a voice component, is deposited into the mailbox of a hearing-impaired individual, he or she may find it difficult or impossible to interpret the message. Similarly, if a text or a fax message, or a multimedia message with a text or a fax component, is deposited into the mailbox of a vision-impaired individual, he or she may find it difficult or impossible to interpret the message.
A live voice call which a hearing-impaired person is there to receive can be routed through a public third-party relay service that performs real-time on-line translation of the call between voice on the caller's end and TDD text on the hearing-impaired person's end of the call. (A corresponding type of service between parties to a telephone call who use different languages is provided by the AT&T Language Line service.) But the third-party relay service does nothing for voice calls which are not answered by the hearing-impaired person and result in a voice message being left for the hearing-impaired person, or for messages that are originated as voice messages. Similarly, it does nothing for text and fax messages sent to a vision-impaired person. And even though automatic text-to-speech or fax-to-speech conversion and vice versa--at least in rudimentary form--is already known in the art, there exists no readily available and easy-to-use service mechanism for the interpretation or conversion of messaging-service messages. Consequently, voice messages or message components left in the mailbox of a hearing-impaired individual are often inaccessible, as are fax or text messages or message components left in the mailbox of a vision-impaired individual.